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Will you ever get the opportunity to cover these butchers and the more obscure cuts of meat that they tend to lean towards? Someplaces, you can order game meat like rabbit, and venison. These cuts of meat are delicious but people don’t really cook them that much anymore because it’s not so readily available unless it’s a regional thing.
Rahm: Yes, I would hope to cover all that stuff in the future of my show.


Everything from dry-aging, to not only meats, but charcuteries and headcheese and the different cuts that people have never seen before. And get into game, and get into a lot of different areas of beef that or meat in general that people haven’t seen. Not so much exotic but on an interesting level. You know, I want the ‘wow’ factor.

Do you have any vegetarian friends left? And so what do they think of the show?

Rahm: Yeah, I have a lot. One, they are very proud of me. Two, I’m not a man that is just into the slaughtering of many animals as I can and cooking them, I know and appreciate. Being a rancher, my mom is a third generation rancher. I was raised on a ranch and I know what it takes to get from point A to point B and I appreciate that fact, and there is a reason why it comes out in my sleep so much is the fact that I am so passionate because I do know what it takes. And I express that to all my vegetarian friends because I am very passionate and very caring from where the food does come from.

And how it gets to the table and what it takes to get to the table. And you know a lot of my friends are vegetarian by choice and a lot of them are vegetarian by health. I still do love and adore vegetables, it just happens that I just love the history the energy and the time it takes to put meat on the table.

Given the title of the show it makes it sound like every episode is going to have some kind of meat accompanied by potatoes. I’m assuming that this is not the case and you’re going to branch out from there will there be more then just meat and potatoes?

Rahm: Meat and potatoes I think for the name. I think for the title is just kind of a quirky way of saying it. Not a quirky way, but ‘meat and potatoes’ is saying meat and sides. Maybe it will be steak and something great that goes with that steak at this particular time. Because you know a lot of different places that I visited is not necessarily just potatoes but maybe hamburger with this great slaw. Or you know there are different ways to cook fries and yes granted they are potatoes but its not just potatoes, it’s not just mashed potatoes. But not everybody in the world knows what poutine is. But it’s wonderful, fries doused in gravy and cheese curds melted all over it from the top, and this particular restaurant actually puts their smoked meat on top of it which is, you can just eat a ton of them. It’s absolutely fun and delicious. You get what I’m saying right, when it’s kind of like ‘this and this’. It’s meat and potatoes, but it certainly is not always going to be meat and potatoes. But it will be some kind of meat and its accompaniment.

Let me ask you, the different places that you go to on the show - how did you come up with picking which place to go to, and which place to feature?

Rahm: You know, and that is very difficult because I wanted to go to every restaurant I possibly could. And they’re like “Rahm -- pipe down you have to chill out buddy.” There’s a team of great people that researched this in the production company, and there are actually two people in the production company and there are actually two people in the office that researched this. One of them we wanted to be different because our Food Network shows do visit a lot of other places, and we didn’t want to go to these same places. We wanted it to be different - not necessarily a steak house that we’ve been to before or a very popular steak house. But maybe a hole in the wall steak house that no one knew about, but not necessarily a diner, dives place. Something different. We wanted to make it something different and there are a team of people that do research. And they find out where to go, and it’s not necessarily the best or the most popular, it’s just something that we think would make great for people to watch. Make great TV for them to watch. For instance Prime and Beyond is a great steak house in a residential area but no one, I would have never known to go there. You pull up, it’s this little building and its one of the best steak houses I have been to date. It was a lot of fun I mean mixing Korean with steak house was just so fun. And the little family was so cute. All the family was. The kids were there. It was just…I think that’s how it’s used, I think they are just looking for something that just makes different TV.

Everyone has a guilty pleasure food. You know that one you eat when nobody else is around. What’s yours?

Rahm: You really wanna know? Okay. And this is really guilty because I love pork rinds. Yeah, pork rinds are what my grandfather showed us chicharrones when we were in Mexico. Pork rinds are a little bit more light and fluffy, chicharrones have more meat to them. And what I do is get my homemade tortillas - I do make all the time - roll them out, flame them on my little open fire, maybe my stove or something. Then I put my chicharrones on it. Basically it is pork belly with a lot of fat on it. Fried them and put a lot of fat on it with loads of salt. You wanted it. You wanted it. That’s my guilty pleasure.